


You've taken something out of me

by towardsmorning



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Allusion to depression, Canon Character of Color, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-06
Updated: 2012-10-06
Packaged: 2017-11-15 17:51:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/530015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towardsmorning/pseuds/towardsmorning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(<i>Prompt: <a href="http://sister-wife.livejournal.com/18299.html?thread=449147#t449147">here</a>; "We've made a graveyard out of the bone white afternoon. (Richard Siken)")</i></p><p>"The sky is a familiar one today, Holmes thinks, the bleached white identical to those spent in late October back in London."</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've taken something out of me

The sky is a familiar one today, Holmes thinks, the bleached white expanse of it identical to those days spent in late October back in London. The chill in the air combined with the colour strips him down and makes him feel raw, exposed nerve endings seeming to prick all over his flesh. Once he sorts through all the metaphorical stinging that results in he finds himself terribly nostalgic under it all. The call of London has quieted over months spent away but only in the way that an out of tune radio turns to static. One quick jolt to the aerial and it comes back with sudden clarity, ringing in his ears and getting stuck in his head for weeks on end.

Joan finds him sat outside, perched twenty odd yards away on a wall. The measured noise of her shoes is what alerts him to her presence, his eyes angled downwards. He'd learned to recognise her footsteps within forty eight hours of her moving in. He'd know her anywhere and instantly by now. Joan settles down next to him, several carefully chosen inches between them, her own eyes trained straight ahead at the singularly uninteresting road. She didn't come out to look or to not look at things; she came out to talk and doesn't care what she's seeing. Holmes glances up at her briefly and then returns his gaze to the ground, going for 'thoughtful' rather than 'surly', though he doubts he's succeeding very well.

With her there, London seems further away that before. Joan Watson has never been to London; has never been to England, or to Britain. The closest she's come is Europe. With her sat those few inches away from him he finds himself being inexorably grounded. Sherlock Holmes is a resident of New York now, of a city that is somehow just a shade too close to London, too alike in enough small ways that he can never stop grabbing for the home he understands is lost to him. He feels himself bleaching out to match the sky as he draws back down into himself and looks up at it again.

"Something on your mind?" she asks at last, apparently made bolder by his movement. Holmes hums tunelessly under his breath and cocks his head to one side.

"Reorganizing," he says finally, tapping a finger to his temple with a tight approximation of a smile. It's true in a way, though not in the way he would normally mean it. He sees her rolling her eyes out of the corner of his own, so used to his 'nonsense' comments about attics and brains that she doesn't even bother to contradict him now.

"Wouldn't you rather do it inside? The weather's crap," Joan says, though she can't be cold because she's wearing four layers and a scarf, elegant where the one he didn't snatch up before leaving is not and besides, Joan doesn't tend to mind the chill much. "Is it about the last case?" she continues when he doesn't respond, a blunt statement more than a question. Good old Joan, he thinks, though he'd never say it aloud- she knows him better than he'd ever expected, knows that care is something that he leaves to other people. There's no need to talk around what she means. Saves them both the trouble of navigating a conversation he isn't equipped for, full of small talk and euphemism. The case she means had been messy, and for a moment a splash of red intrudes on the white in his mind. He can see why she might draw that conclusion. 

"No," Holmes answers, and then: "London, actually." He wants to see how she'll respond. Holmes always wants to know how Joan will respond to things, he supposes, pushes and prods her beyond even what he thinks is acceptable. Something of him is caught in her, skin pulled taut by barbed wire, and it feels like an itch at the base of his skull when she is with him. That itch is something he can't live with or without. He'd never compare it to an addiction, having experienced the real thing, but it's still something terrifying and unholy and only avoidable in theory, rarely in practice. It isn't, he muses, even that he really 'likes' her, though the thought occurs that such an event isn't far off at all. No, it's only that she interests him at the moment, an altogether more dangerous proposition. Friends can drift away, be relegated to the address book and sent a Christmas card once a year. Obsession tends not to be so forgiving.

"Good memories or bad?" she asks, turning to face him. For a woman so much more prone to emotional displays than him, he swears her face is cut from marble sometimes, and her eyes are shuttered. He likes that she can think beyond the obvious and recently broached subjects to wonder about his good memories. Even Holmes doesn't always manage that, and he's the one with said good memories to start with.

"Not really," he says. The sky is white, his skin and bones feel too hot and heavy. Joan Watson is sat several inches to his left and he doesn't know that he feels much at all, good or bad. He knows the memories are there. His mind doesn't seem ready to think about the details yet. Joan's eyes stay shuttered as she lets the comment pass without remark or contradiction. That might be understanding, or it might be exasperation. The problem will occupy him for a good half an hour tonight.

Holmes adds one to the mental tally labelled 'points owed to Watson' and lets the silence continue, filled with memories of dead things and a city he wishes he could bury alongside them, his undertaker sat beside him to lead the way.

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from 'Wishbone' by Richard Siken, since that was the poem used as a prompt. Man, and I promised myself I'd never use a Siken line for a fic title, too.


End file.
